Un Homme de têtes

For 1898 totally amazing. Even when we rode around like cars on our buts in the early 70s it was amazing. He was the first and father of imagination of that sort.

Not only is this a clever use of the limited technology of the time, it is an utterly hilarious minute. Melies plays the main character, a man who is able to remove his own head and put it on a table. Now there are two heads, but that's only the beginning. I see this guy sitting up nights, imagining what this new form of entertainment can do and then improvising how he can manage it.

In December of 1895, the Lumière brothers began the first series of screenings of their "moving pictures" starting with this the history of cinema as a form of entertainment. Among those first impressed by the magic of motion pictures was a man who differed from the Lumière's idea of using cinema only for scientific purposes, the stage magician Georges Méliès. Story says that the very day he watched a movie for the first time, Méliès bought a Lumière cinematographer to do his own movies as he discovered the potential of movies as an art form. Like all the early pioneers, Méliès started with short documentaries, but quickly he put in practice his idea of using the invention to tell stories. His continuous experimentation took him in 1896 to the discovery of many special effects where he was finally able to "transform reality" in his movies. The amazing "Cinemagician" had arrived and with him, cinema as a narrative art had been born.

1898's "Un Homme De Têtes" (Literally "A man of heads", but better known as "The Four Troublesome Heads") is one of the earliest surviving films done by Méliès, and while not as well known as his posterior work, it already shows the amazing talent that the magician had as a creator of special effects. As many of his earliest movies, "Un Homme De Têtes" is basically a short movie where he shows a magical trick impossible to achieve in real life. In this case, a magician (Méliès himself) appears on stage, and removes his own head with magic, putting it in a table next to him. Suddenly, another head appears over his shoulders and the head on the table begins to sing. The magician repeats the trick until he has three heads on a table besides his own, and now he has four singing heads to perform a song.

Barely with little less of a minute of duration, "Un Homme De Têtes" is a wonderful display of Méliès' talent with special effects, as with a mixture of prosthetics, dissolves and multiple exposures he achieves a very lively representation of his magic. While for today's technologies this little trick is pretty easy to achieve, it is a remarkable achievement for early film-making, as the "gimmick" surprisingly looks very real and still is very effective despite being over 100 years old. The way Méliès conceived the trick is also worthy of praise, as the movie feels very fluid and the necessary cuts for the trick are done very smoothly. As with most "gimmick films", there is no plot other than a magician performing his act as if it was a theater presentation, however, Méliès makes a very charming performance as the magician that adds a lot to the movie's atmosphere of being in a circus.

French director Georges Méliès is definitely better remembered for his early fantasy films like his version of "Cinderella" ("Cendrillon") or his famous "A Trip to the Moon" ("Le Voyage Dans la lune"), movies where not only he showed wonderful special effects, but also a brilliant narrative skill and a vision for set designs. However, it was with films like "Un Homme De Têtes" where everything started, and when one compares Méliès' early work with the early films of other pioneers, one can see who was truly the superior filmmaker at the time. Definitely one of the early masters of cinema, Georges Méliès' work is one of clever tricks, enormous imagination and true magic, as he was probably the first person who knew that cinema was the factory of dreams. After all, he was not called the "Cinemagician" for nothing. 7/10

Early French filmmaker Georges Méliès is universally known as a pioneering cinematic visionary, courtesy of the phenomenal success of his most famous film, 'Le Voyage dans la lune / A Trip to the Moon (1902).' However, the director's undeniable genius is also apparent in many of his earlier, lesser-known shorts, most running less than one minute in length. Throughout the 1890's, most filmmakers had only exploited the cinematic medium for experimental or documentary purposes, capturing images of everyday objects or situations. Méliès, a magician by trade, saw things much differently. He imagined cinema being used to translate the impossible onto screen, to surprise and baffle the audience, to transport them into a world unlike their own. His 'Un homme de têtes / The Four Troublesome Heads' of 1898 is an absolute gem, and an incredible exhibition of how far Méliès was ahead of his time in terms of visual effects.

The film begins when a magician (as always, played by Méliès himself) appears on stage and, remarkably, removes his own head. When he places the singing head onto the table, a new one suddenly appears on the his shoulders, and the magician and the head interact with each other, with the former scrambling beneath the table to prove to the audience that he is not playing a cheap magical trick on them. The magician repeats this stunning feat twice more, until there are three enthusiastically singing Méliès heads sitting on the table, and the intact magician entertains them with his banjo.

Probably the first use of split-screen in cinema history, the visual effects in 'Un homme de têtes' are nothing short of remarkable. The countless uses of split screen, dissolves and double exposures blend seamlessly into the finished product, convincingly passing itself off as having been filmed in a single take. The director's extraordinary on screen charisma is once again on show for all to see, and you can certainly tell that he was formerly a magician; his vibrant enthusiasm for the performance is almost infectious. There's also the sheer casualness with which Méliès removes his own head, as if it's nothing at all to him. Despite already knowing that an exceptional amount of work must have gone into producing the film, somehow it is all made to seem so easy… almost like magic.

Even though it's only 1898, filmmaker Georges Méliès is already starting to move beyond the substitution splice which made possible the various spectacular illusions on film which he produced. "The Four Troublesome Heads" not only uses such an effect, it also continues on to employ multiple exposures (or superimposing) to create even crazier illusions which are amazing for the time. In this brief film, director Méliès stars as a magician or prestidigitator who is able to detach his head from his shoulders and set it on a table, where it is able to converse with the magician in an amusingly delightful way. He continues to repeat the same illusion until there are three heads on two tables which are able to perform a sing-a-long with the master. Finally, in an amazing twist which I won't spoil, the magician is able to return everything to normal.

Even though it's only a minute, "The Four Troublesome Heads" contains some points of interest that make its context more interesting. Not only was the theme of dismembered body-parts a common one in the filmmaker's career, the director would often perform tricks with dismembered heads--his own, most often--and this movie was the first. In "The Man With the Rubber Head" of 1901, he is able to blow it up using bellows (or so it appears) and the trick of a zoom combined with superimposition. In "The Melomaniac" the heads are music notes, thrown up on a telephone wire to form a line of "God Save the King". In "The Mysterious Knight" the head is actually that of a young woman who he can make appear and disappear, and even in "Dislocation Extraordinary" a clown is able to take his head off and sit on top of it. The disembodied was clearly a fascination of Méliès's is general; and the head was no doubt the most useful for the films in his perspective because it could show amusing facial reactions to delight and amuse the viewers.

Yet, when you do look at it closely, you can figure out how the magic was accomplished. First of all, note how the head is not living when the director is holding it: merely a dummy head, used only briefly to fool the audience. The headless person effect was very simple also: a dark cloth used to cover the director's own head. This explains why a black background (very bland for a Méliès production as opposed to the beautiful sets he would paint for other movies) was necessary to carry the illusion. Why, I cannot explain. It's more obvious here than in the aforementioned films because the entire set is black, but if you pay more attention to where the head is disembodied in the later movies, you will notice it's the same way. Furthermore, while the heads are on the table, the tabletops will generally tend to shake around a lot, again because they and the heads are being superimposed onto the set. Méliès would later improve on this, but for the time it probably didn't matter since audiences had absolutely no clue how he achieved it anyway.

Nowadays, "The Four Troublesome Heads" is often considered one of the director's best known films, and it's easy to see why. Not only are the effects amazingly well-done for 1898, Méliès's humorous performance carries the sight gags and makes them fun and amusing to see. He was a gifted actor, whether he played a frightened inn guest, a magician or Satan, and his joyful charm onscreen makes these shorts put a smile on your face. It's no wonder he played the lead roles in most of his films; not only was he forced to play them, he did a great job in them. Even though this film is 120 years old as of this writing, it holds up very well today and no doubt will keep you entertained throughout its brief run-time.